


Spring Rain

by in_lighter_ink



Category: The West Wing
Genre: 1-500 words, Comment Fic, Gen, TS Eliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_lighter_ink/pseuds/in_lighter_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: The West Wing, author's choice, 'stirring dull roots with spring rain' (T. S. Eliot)</p><p>Sam goes to California. At first, it had been nothing more than an obligation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring Rain

At first, it had been nothing more than an obligation, a duty to a woman he'd met once or twice, an errand for which his tact was best suited. Stop running, you're a joke, you'll never win...

 _Your integrity is making us look bad._

But then he'd met Will Bailey, Will who hadn't been afraid of ridicule. In whom Sam had recognized a kindred ability to turn phrases into mind-changing rhetoric. Who'd countered the White House's -- Sam's -- objections to the Wilde campaign's continuation with an unswerving belief in it. Who'd only be proud of this campaign that he was holding together with bailing twine and idealism when it was over.

He'd been like Will once, had been willing to pursue the ideas that weren't practical, to chase them across the night sky, to ask impertinent questions, to incite a permanent revolution. There had been a time he'd believed in fidelity and poetry and metaphor. It hadn't been that long ago.

Maybe it was nostalgia for the beginnings of his first Bartlet campaign that made Sam follow Will and Elsie to the press conference. Maybe it was the belief that he'd be able to find another way to persuade Will to give it up. Maybe it was curiosity. Whatever the cause, this was no longer about running an errand for the President.

Sitting across from Will, in his mattress-partitioned "office," watching him mainline aspirin and coffee -- it had hurt, but it had been the purposeful pain of warming fingers numb with cold, or the rejuvenating pain that desert ground must feel at the first drop of rain. Unintentionally, the man had prodded none-too-gently at the part of Sam that ached dully whenever anyone said 'MS' (or 'father'), the part that had once seen possibilities coloring the future as blossoms in a verdant garden. The part that CJ condescendingly called Spanky and Toby called naive. The part that Sam had felt wilting and dying, unable to withstand the buffets of the past year.

And now, as Will handled the press with admirable poise and good-humored grace, Sam felt something stir within him. Snatches of Eliot, dense and alive, began to blend with Will's defense of a ludicrous campaign.

 _You know only a heap of broken images: this campaign's a mechanism of persuasion, and I will show you something different..._

 _There are worse things in the world than no longer being alive._

It was too close to the track of Sam's own thoughts. He felt his head snap up seemingly of its own volition, and for the first time, he truly saw the man behind the podium. The defiance written in the set of his shoulders, the intelligence and humor in the face of a bemused press. The borrowed tie that didn't even begin to go with his suit.

And knew that he wouldn't be able to change Will's mind. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The beginnings of an idea began to take shape, and he smiled.


End file.
